Regulators have voted to approve America's first ever gene therapy for public use. An advisory panel of cancer experts at the Food and Drug Administration unanimously backed the one-time treatment at a meeting on Wednesday.

When I came to Seattle Children’s in 2010, my vision was for us to become a global epicenter for childhood cancer immunotherapy cures. I imagined that, someday, doctors from around the world would send us blood cells from children with cancer. We would insert instructions into T cells – a “warrior” type of immune cell – that tell them to find and kill cancer cells. Then we would send the “reprogrammed” cells back to the hospital, where the child would receive them as a simple infusion.